Author Topic: CarcC News #6: 01/15  (Read 7549 times)

Offline danisthirty

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CarcC News #6: 01/15
« on: February 09, 2015, 09:07:06 AM »
Carcassonne Central News #6 - January 2015


Welcome
Hello, and welcome back to the Carcassonne Central "monthly" Newsletter! If the fact that we even have a newsletter comes as news to you (pun intended) then don't worry, you're not alone. Probably. I was quite literally inundated with a message from a devastated forum member who was concerned that our much-loved newsletter may have come to a premature end. But I assure you now, this is not the case, I was just a bit busy what with it being Christmas and new year and all that (happy 2015 by the way) and consequently didn't have time to write one for December. But I'm back now, and have been idle enough at work lately to be able to bring you this latest offering! Please enjoy it responsibly...


Forum News
News and Events\ Carcassonne meets StarWars
I pulled back my Star Wars duvet this morning and brushed my teeth with my Star Wars toothbrush before donning my Star Wars slippers and Star Wars dressing gown and going down my Star Wars stairs to have some Star Wars Flakes for breakfast from my Star Wars bowl which I got from my Star Wars cupboard. Then I spent the rest of the day crying as I couldn't play a special Star Wars-themed version of Carcassonne... until now! (well, soon apparently) "Yay" for Star Wars...  ::)

News and Events\ Mini Expansion "German Castles" for Carcassonne-on-Tour 2015
In 2013 we had the Wind/ Compass Roses. In 2014 we had the German Monasteries. In 2015, Carcassonne on Tour's special mini-expansion will be a set of German Castles. The vote to decide which castles should feature on the tiles is now over but there's still plenty of castle-based discussion to be had if you're looking for it, and let's face it, who isn't?

General\ Alternate Colors for Tunnel tokens
It isn't hard to get hold of the full range of playing pieces in the non-standard colours such as purple, orange, pink, brown, white and "unpainted" (except for perhaps the phantoms) but if someone wants to play with one of these colours and you're hoping to include "The Tunnels" then you're going to have a problem as you can't buy tunnel tokens in these additional colours. Maybe you could make some? Here's what others have done...

General\ What's next
What does 2015 have in store for us as devoted Carcassonne fans? Large expansions, small expansions, spin-offs or more from the colourful world of Carcassonne 2.0. None of us know for sure, but it's quite good fun guessing!

General\ I love the postman...
See how various members of the Carcassonne Central community have grown their collections since the beginning of December. There's spin-off games galore, expansions, freebies, gifts, prizes, trousers, zombies, robots and a gratuitous photo of no less than 10 copies of Ark of the Covenant (see page 12)!

General\ Carcassonne by Forums
When was the last time you spent over two months playing a game of Carcassonne? What's that, never? Oh, bad luck. Well just in case you missed it, "Carcassonne by Forums" ran between 1st October and 6th December last year as a 5-player basic game (72 tiles). You can follow it tile by tile by clicking through this thread, but be warned: it includes numerous painfully bad puns and other "jokes", many of which occur without notice and could be damaging to your health...

General\ Table Talk - how does this happen at your game?
How many times have you heard this immediately after drawing a tile: "If you put it there and take over my city then I'm never talking to you again. Or marrying you." Or this: "Oh? That's interesting. If I was in your position I'd definitely try to... oh wait, sorry, I won't say." Or even this: "Why would you do that?! Are you blind or just stupid? It makes it really easy for Blue to steal Red's farm if you do that and the rest of us will lose out because of it! This is what you need to do, here. Give me your tile and I'll do it for you..." Table talk can really vary from game to game, many of us have talked about our experiences of it on this thread.

General\ Element(s) of the Week: (weeks 13 to 21)
Fortunately, Whaleyland's "Element of the Week" series cares not for the distractions of Christmas or New Year and has percevered relentlessly throughout the festive season. This means there's a lot to cover in the list below which presents a good opportunity for someone to slip something ridiculous into it without telling anyone. But who'd do a thing like that?

Meet the Members\ ...
December and January have been very significant months in terms of new members joining Carcassonne Central. Understandably, some of our 342 new members might prefer to remain silent and merely observe what goes on here from a distance, whereas others prefer to be more vocal! A good starting point if you're someone who wants to get more actively involved is by posting a message about yourself on the "Meet the Members" forums. This is where you can introduce yourself to everyone else or describe how you discovered Carcassonne, just like the following members did in December/ January: Lobo, nanoanno, DLloyd09, Decar, Graham W, El_Hoffmann, Retrotigo, tsk0421, Tnsol, Chooselife, TheDoctor_13, franks. Please join me in wishing all of them a very warm welcome!  :)

Reviews & Session Reports\ Surprise Carcassonne tournament in Barcelona today
Jungleboy was fortunate enough to happen upon a Carcassonne tournament whilst on holiday in Barcelona. Obviously it would have been rude not to have joined in! This is his review on how the tournament went from his perspective, and how narrowly he missed out on qualifying for the knock-out stage.

Reviews & Session Reports\ Mega next week
"If I had a penny for every time I'd played a 13-hour game of Carcassonne with around 800 tiles, my current financial situation would remain unchanged." This is an unnecessarily long-winded way of saying that I've never done this, but Rosco has and he's got photos to prove it (lots of them).

Reviews & Session Reports\ First game with Carcassonne: the Castle
If you're a keen Carcassonne player who's looking for something a bit different, you could do worse than looking at one of Carcassonne's many spin-off games. "South Seas" and "Gold Rush" (both part of the "Around the World" series) are the most recent additions but it's still possible to get hold of older spin-offs such as "The Castle" which jungleboy discusses in this excellent report.

Strategy Guide\ Miscellanious Tips
Carcassonne Central is hoping to develop it's own strategy guide throughout 2015 and beyond. If you have any tips, tricks or things to consider that you're willing to share with the wider community then please post them on this thread. Alternatively, feel very free to start a new post if you have a particular strategy you'd like to share and discuss in more detail.

Strategy Guide\ Maximizing Use of the Abbot (Carcassonne II)
Regardless of your feelings towards Carcassonne 2.0, it seems almost inevitable that we're all going to have to learn how to use the new "Abbot" meeples at some point. CarcinFool has provided an excellent guide to how you can get the most from your Abbot so that we can all hit the ground running and hopefully not lose too many games to people who've only been playing for a week or two in the process.

Online Games and Competitions\ Leagues (including expansion leagues)\ Traders & Builders League
Carcassonne Central's first tournament of the year is already underway! 18 players have been split into two groups for a league-style competition where everyone plays everyone else in their group, and then faces their equally-ranked opponent from the opposite group in the grand finale. About 60 – 65 (of 72) matches have been played so far; you can follow the progress within the two groups by visiting the threads either for Group A or Group B (click on the group).

The Workshop\ Crafters' Guild\ Carcassonne Graphics Overhaul (ongoing)
If you're used to assuming people are talking about the newsletters you've written when you overhear them saying "that's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" then you could be in for a shock and a disappointment when you see this post from Graham W. The disappointment will be very much a temporary measure, but the shock will stay with you as you browse the word-failing incredibleness of his artistic overhauling of his girlfriend's Carcassonne tiles. Truly amazing, but not for sale (yet)!

The Workshop\ Crafters' Guild\ Basically Wooden Carcassonne Box prototype
As everyone with more than a passing interest in Carcassonne will already have realised, suitable storage solutions for 500 or more tiles plus meeples, towers, catapults, mid-game snacks, score tracks and all manner of complimentary tokens are few and far between. Every now and again we'll see some incredible craftsmanship from someone on the forums who has made something for themselves, but there aren't many affordable boxes available for those of us without the required carpentry or artistic skills required to do the same. Depending on your definition of "affordable" though, Decar has been consulting very closely with "Basically Wooden" over the design of their Carcassonne boxes and what they've ended up with seems like it could sell well!


Carcassonne Player's Guide #6: Considering your options
Sometimes, tiles just seem to fit so nicely in a certain gap that you simply can't resist placing them there and don't consider the full consequences of your decision. With this in mind, let's pretend that it's down to you to place the last tile of the game (a crrr tile – as shown) and you've been careful enough with your meeples that you're able to claim something with this tile according to the normal rules. The area of the landscape we're going to be concentrating on is shown below (have a good look at this and think about what you'd do before reading on):



One very clear option is to place the tile as shown in the example below. This completes two of your features: a city for 4 points and a road for 2 points. In addition to this, you might as well claim one of the other road branches on the tile just placed for an additional point. So, the total score generated by this is 4 + 2 + 1 = 7 points. Not bad. However, let's remember that the incomplete city and the road are still worth 2 points between them, so this placement is only really generating 5 points. And in addition to this, the complete city adds another 3 points to the value of Red's farm, so in terms of lead generated by this placement, it only puts you ahead of your opponent by 2 points.



So let's consider something else; have a look at the example below. It isn't immediately obvious, but claiming the incomplete city is actually a better option. It might only generate 4 points, but it doesn't give anything away to Red which means these are all points in your favour (you could also claim the 3-point city adjacent to Blue's cloister for the same number of points).



This may seem like an obvious tip, but I've used it here to demonstrate the importance of assessing how your next tile placement could affect the scores of other players rather than just you. After all, completing a city is practically a no-brainer in many games, but if you're completing a 2-tile city on an opponent's farm then it only benefits you by 1 point as the other 3 will be offset against the points your opponent will win by you adding another city to their farm. If you're using Traders & Builders and they have a pig on their farm, or if their farm is occupied by their barn (Abbey & Mayor), then there is no benefit at all in completing a 2-tile city/ town (other than perhaps getting a meeple back).


MemberS of the MonthS
Do not adjust your eyes, that's "MonthS" with an S at the end! It seems a shame not to recognise a member of the month for December just because I was too lazy to write a newsletter, although it has to be said that it's rarely an easy decision choosing a suitable member of the month for any single month, let alone two. Let's crack on though, and celebrate the awesomeness of these two outstanding individuals:

December:

:(y) Quite understandably, he isn't a fan of "Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island"

:(y) He's a bit handy with computers and has been having some indecipherable conversations with farin (the guy responsible for JCloisterZone) which apparently weren't in Czech, but might as well have been. He's certainly not afraid to throw himself in at the deep end anyway

:(y) Speaking of foreign languages, he's also a bit of a dab-hand at Japanese!

:(y) He's very fond of large, wooden Carcassonne boxes and he's passionate about sharing this fondness with the rest of the community

January:

:(y) After becoming a member of Carcassonne Central on the 2nd January he has posted just 15 times. However, in a substantial case of quality over quantity, his work so far has earnt him 21 merit points – that's 1.4 merits per post

:(y) Many of us are particularly jealous of his girlfriend, which is an unusual feeling for a married man with two kids to admit to. Regardless of this though, he has potentially made his girlfriend one of the happiest Carcassonne players in England, if not the world

:(y) The main man himself - Klaus-Jürgen Wrede – is a fan of his work!

:(y) If anyone is capable of putting an end to Carcassonne's unpopular new style by replacing it with something new and better, it's this guy. And deep down we're all hoping that this is exactly what happens!

Many thanks to both of you for your outstanding contributions to Carcassonne Central over the last two months. Hopefully it should be obvious to everyone who you are by now (click on any of the thumbs above if you need a less than subtle hint), but just in case, please take a bow Decar and Graham W! It is more than likely that you will receive a special "Member of the Month" tile before the end of the year...


Carcassonne Knowledge Tester (CKT) #6: Score the Farm (2)
It was almost midnight one evening in early December and Dan was desperately trying to come up with some sort of Carcassonne conundrum on the dining room table before his wife came downstairs and berated him for being up so late. There were tiles everywhere. And worse still, they'd all become jumbled together and would require sorting again before he would be able to get to sleep. It was a bad time. But as he stared despondently at the chaos in front of him, a wooden dragon caught his eye and a plan immediately sprang to mind. He haphazardly threw 50 or so tiles together, slapped a couple of bridges on the resulting landscape, bunged some castle tokens into the mix and even added a tower for good measure. Finally he placed the dragon; now it was ready...



Anticipating the dragon's rampage, it can be seen that meeples have attempted to hide from it inside illegally placed Abbeys ( :-[), on top of bridges and in (or behind) towers. But it doesn't matter whether they're big, little, mayors, wagons, builders, pigs or even phantoms – the dragon can and will eat pretty much anything.

So, the dragon starts off in C6. With six orthogonal moves at his disposal he can get to pretty much anywhere on the board (indicated by a white dot on the top left of the tile) although there are a couple of safe areas (indicated by a blue square on the top right corner of the tile) owing mostly to the fact that he's scared of fairies and can't travel across empty spaces (i.e. missing tiles). Based on this, the Blue knight in F2 and the Blue farmer in F6 are safe, as is the Red knight in the incomplete castle (F6/G6). The Blue pig in G7 is also safe as it can't be reached by the dragon but could be removed if the Blue farmer in F6 was eaten. Since this can't happen, we know he will remain on the board for now. Sadly the same can't be said for the Red Pig in A1. Although he can't be reached by the dragon, the dragon can eat the Red farmer in A4. If this happens, the pig can no longer remain on the farm and must be removed.

The mage and the witch cannot be eaten by the dragon either. As far as I can tell though (and this is something I'm not 100% on), they can be present on an unclaimed road or city as long as it is incomplete so the Mage (E1) and the Witch (E5) are safe. Phew! Barns are safe from dragons too so the barn at the intersection of (B1/B2/C1/C2) is safe. The only other meeple that can't be eaten is the Blue knight in the incomplete castle on B5/B6. The fact that he's occupying a feature that straddles two tiles makes him safe from the dragon who must leave him where he is and seek sustenance elsewhere.

Congratulations to MrNumbers and Rosco for providing the answers to this, your prize is my unending respect and admiration both as members of Carcassonne Central but more importantly as men. You had this already, but I thought I'd reinforce it here just to make all three of us feel slightly uncomfortable.  :o

Anyway, I've now spent so long discussing the answers to the previous question that I haven't got a lot of time to introduce the new one other than to say "How many points will the following arrangement of farmers win for Blue and Red?"



Good luck, please PM me with your answers!  :(y)


Forum Statistics
It's been reassuring to see such strong growth for both December and January. In fact, January was one of our best months ever with new all-time records for both the number of members simultaneously online and monthly page views. Facebook and Twitter are reflecting this growth too, mostly thanks to all the great stuff that's being posted on these forums:

December
82 new topics: up 156% on 12/13
1077 new posts: up 217% on 12/13
143 new members: up 10% on 12/13
44 members simultaneously online: up 63% on 12/13
256,072 page views: up 153% on 12/13

January
91 new topics: up 146% on 01/14
1637 new posts: up 292% on 01/14
199 new members: up 54% on 01/14
59 members simultaneously online: up 127% on 01/14
268,021 page views: up 148% on 01/14

623 Facebook fans
175 Twitter followers

So well done and thank you everyone for sharing your photos, discoveries, ideas, suggestions, tips and opinions... and for making Carcassonne Central such a wonderful place to be in the process!


The Last Tile
Hopefully you will have noticed among all the Forum News that we have now begun work on our very own "Strategy Guide" where Carcassonne Central members are encouraged to post strategic/ tactical hints, tips, advice and anything else that may be of use to the wider community in terms of helping them to develop their playing skills. Nobody is excluded from their duty to contribute here, so please visit the Welcome! page and don't hesitate to post your thoughts if you have anything to add.

I also have an advance warning for those among us who have taken part in one or more of Carcassonne Central's online tournaments. If this includes you, be sure to keep a close eye on the Online Games and Competitions forum over the next couple of weeks as there is an announcement on the way which will hopefully be of interest!  :meeple: :green-meeple: :blue-meeple: :red-meeple: :black-meeple:

A final piece of house-keeping advice before we part company for another month: if you start a new topic anywhere on the forums, please give it a concise title so that it can be easily identified in the "Last post by..." column of the main forum page. Topic names here are restricted to 24 characters but even this is cut to 20 characters once "Re: " has been added to the start of subsequent replies. You don't have to do this, and I openly admit that it certainly isn't something I do well, but it really can make life much easier for those of us who merely want to see what's being discussed where at a glance, so let's do our best to help them out...  :) :(y)


Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=1516.0
« Last Edit: October 11, 2017, 09:47:58 AM by danisthirty »

Offline DLloyd09

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Re: CarcC News #6: 01/15
« Reply #1 on: February 09, 2015, 12:15:37 PM »
Great updates, thanks Dan!  :(y) :(y) :(y)

Offline Safari

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Re: CarcC News #6: 01/15
« Reply #2 on: February 09, 2015, 05:25:35 PM »
This means there's a lot to cover in the list below which presents a good opportunity for someone to slip something ridiculous into it without telling anyone. But who'd do a thing like that?
I found out! It's you, who'd do a thing like that.  :@

BTW: Again, a great newsletter!
Safari

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Offline MrNumbers

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Re: CarcC News #6: 01/15
« Reply #3 on: February 10, 2015, 04:44:31 AM »
Nice job, Dan!
I already forgot that Carcassonne by Forums game has ended in December :D
"I never lose. Either I win or I learn." (Nelson Mandela)

Offline danisthirty

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Re: CarcC News #6: 01/15
« Reply #4 on: February 10, 2015, 06:25:22 AM »
Nice job, Dan!
I already forgot that Carcassonne by Forums game has ended in December :D

Thanks MrNumbers!

It does indeed seem like a long time ago already! I'm wondering if the world is ready for a rematch of this yet, perhaps using some expansions this time?


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